Fuels

Wildland fires need fuels to burn, and fuels impact the way a fire burns. 'Fuel' is a broad term that encompasses all of the vegetation, sticks, logs, needles, and organic soils (peat or duff) that are available to burn in any particular fire. Different 'layers' of fuel–often referred to as surface, ladder, and canopy fuels–have different impacts on fire behavior and spread. The properties of fuel, such as fuel moisture, change daily, seasonally, and even on longer time scales based on weather, climate, and drought. The people who manage forests often use 'fuel treatments' such as thinning and prescribed fire to reduce the amount and types of fuel available to burn in a wildfire. Fuel treatments are not one size fits all–they must be carefully planned and implemented based on forest or grassland type, proximity to communities, and other project objectives. Research from the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station helps land managers plan, implement, and maintain effective fuel treatments over time.

Featured Work

• Science offers new approaches to determine where mechanical fuel reduction treatments are feasible, where there might be operational or administrative constraints, and how managers could overcome these constraints. And a new science-based model helps forest managers target fuels treatments where they make the most sense.
• Long-term forest studies—and the photographs taken at these sites —help us understand how different types of fire and other forest management affect the trajectory of forests. This Science You Can Use — in Photos brings together what we know about fire and fuel treatments in dry conifer forests across the western United States.
• More high-severity wildfire is occurring in the western United States and affecting people and forests in challenging ways. A comprehensive review of fuel treatment research shows that returning low-severity fire through fuel treatments is an effective way to reduce high-severity fire.
• Researchers are tracking results from two of the longest-running fuel treatment studies in the western United States–at the Lick Creek Demonstration-Research Forest and the Lubrecht Experimental Forest, both in western Montana.
• Researchers with the Rocky Mountain Research Station collaborated with colleagues from research institutions across the country to synthesize existing scientific literature on landscape-scale fuel treatment effectiveness in North American ecosystems through a systematic literature review. The synthesis is summarized in a Connected Science.
• The From Threat to Opportunity Science You Can Use discusses simulations performed by Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists and others to further understand how to orient fuel treatments on federal lands in a manner that reduces fire transmission to communities while expanding the footprint of beneficial fire.